Great point. I honestly can't remember the last time that I've had a smooth experience with any kind of business or commercial thing, even when I'm the one paying for services. Bank declines transactions randomly when balance is sufficient, on vendors that have been used before. Orders of equipment over $10k are days late, no explanation provided, no number to speak to a human, just ineffective support robots. Planning days or weeks around other people's problems is pretty normal, but really, that just means that I get to postpone going to the DMV and getting the run-around from them.
Not sure if it's quiet-quitting or what, but the last few years (basically since covid) my consumer experiences in the US are feeling a lot more.. shall we say, European? And I guess that's fine, pretty much everything really can wait. But it's hard to maintain one's own sense of professional urgency to keep things smooth for others when literally nothing is smooth for you.
> Orders of equipment over $10k are days late, no explanation provided, no number to speak to a human, just ineffective support robots.
I would be furious. If I spend $10k I want to be speaking with a human if something goes wrong. I feel like in the US we have given up on decent customer experiences.
Every company seems to just be phoning it in lately. The number of times I've ordered something from an online retailer, and either 1. the wrong thing arrived, 2. the thing arrived broken/doa, or 3. the thing never arrived, has at least tripled since say 5 years ago. And to a lot of companies' credit, their indifferent but friendly customer support tends to just say "<yawn> just keep whatever we sent you and we'll refund you. You can try to order the thing again, and we'll maybe send you the right, working thing next time. Or maybe not. Who knows?"
Not sure if it's quiet-quitting or what, but the last few years (basically since covid) my consumer experiences in the US are feeling a lot more.. shall we say, European? And I guess that's fine, pretty much everything really can wait. But it's hard to maintain one's own sense of professional urgency to keep things smooth for others when literally nothing is smooth for you.